Former UFC champion Daniel Cormier sympathizes with bantamweight contender Umar Nurmagomedov as he struggles to secure a title shot for himself. Umar is the #2 ranked fighter in the division but the champ Merab Dvalishvili has repeatedly denied him a title shot claiming he’s just a nepo baby. DC doesn’t think so.
Cormier believes this is a situation akin to what Islam Makhachev found himself in when the lightweight champs of the time weren’t too keen on fighting him. This was despite Islam convincingly defeating everyone the UFC had matched up with him.
In an episode of the Good Guy/Bad Guy show, Cormier spoke about how it was his famous last name that was causing him more distress.
“It really is like Islam, do you remember the problems Islam had fighting inside of the top 5, before he got a championship opportunity? It feels like very similar to Umar….It can’t be the name that’s earning this championship opportunity.”
Both Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen were in agreement that the OG Nurmagomedov, Khabib had never used his name to get himself in a comfortable position and neither was Umar.
Sonnen further shot down Dvalishvili’s claims and said that the Dagestani had never pulled the nepo card and had only sent forward their best player when they were truly at the top of the division.
“That team has never pulled that card. That team, when they make their arguments, they do have a system to make the arguments. They look at records, they look at rankings, they look at what their guy has done vs. what the competition has done and once they decide for the integrity of the sport and the purity of this game, I truly am deserving that’s the only time they ever step up.”
It is because of the fact that he has put the work in and beat everyone in front of him that the notion of the Davlishvili ducking ‘Young Eagle‘ keeps growing by the day. And it is growing exponentially as Dvalishvili calls out everyone from Sean O’Malley to Peter Yan for the title fight.
The former champion O’Malley, however, is backing Umar!
O’Malley claims Merab afraid of Umar
As he recovers from hip surgery, O’Malley is patiently watching the curious set of events unfolding in the bantamweight division. Following his win at UFC Macau, bantamweight champion Dvalishvili recently called out Petr Yan to a fight. He even posted a rather cringe video doing so, which is not a very good look for the champ.
View this post on Instagram
In an episode of the TimboSugarShow, O’Malley agreed to the common sentiment that Merab was indeed dodging Umar and said,
“Merab is absolutely s*itting himself terrified of Umar, I mean he doesn’t want to fight Umar. Now he’s saying he wants to fight Petr.”
‘The Machine’, meanwhile claims that the main reason for not accepting the fight is how ‘disrespectful’ Umar is towards him. But this is the fight game, being disrespectful is just how things work around here.
